Changing the way we vote is serious business. We urge the St. Paul City Council to take its time and look hard at the legal difficulties of what is called instant runoff voting.

This voting method, sometimes called IRV or “ranked voting,” was the subject of a successful petition drive in St. Paul this year. That generally means it would go on the ballot in November to let voters decide whether to amend the city charter. But the City Council has to pass a resolution to get it on the ballot, and it can decline if it finds the measure to be unconstitutional or contrary to state law.

That seems to be a strong possibility in the case of instant runoff voting.

Currently, voters pick a single candidate — or in the case of the school board, for as many candidates as there are openings. In the general election, the top vote-getter wins.

One vote. One winner.

Instant runoff voting allows voters to rank the candidates in the order of preference. If no candidate has a majority, the “instant runoff” begins. The lowest-ranking candidate is eliminated, and those who voted for that candidate as their first choice have their second-choice votes counted, producing a new tabulation. In large fields, this process could go on several times until one candidate has a majority. It is all done automatically, presumably as quickly as a normal election.

Confused? It’s easy to be. It is on that basis that we have been wary of instant runoff voting. But there are legal reasons to be wary as well.

The new system has the appeal of allowing voters to support third-party candidates without feeling they are “wasting” their votes. It does away with primaries and provides for the winner to be elected with a majority, although it does so in a circuitous manner.

But it is darn confusing and hard to explain. Ramsey County Elections Manager Joe Mansky, whose office runs elections for the city of St. Paul, said it would mean the city and the St. Paul School Board would have to conduct elections by different rules.

He said the county’s voting equipment couldn’t make the necessary runoff tabulations and would have to do it by hand until such equipment is available.

Here is where the issue stands.

Mansky certified that St. Paul supporters of IRV were successful at gathering enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot this year during the presidential, U.S. Senate, congressional and legislative elections. The ballot measure would ask voters if they want to amend the city charter to require IRV for city elections.

The next stop is the St. Paul City Council. Council members asked City Attorney John Choi to study the issue and advise them. His staff looked at previous cases, at state law, at opinions by the State Supreme Court and at advice given on the issue by the Attorney General.

His conclusion is that, while this version of IRV has not been declared unconstitutional, it is a good bet that it would be. Based on a 1915 state Supreme Court decision on a different ranked-voting system used by the city of Duluth, Choi and Deputy City Attorney Gerald Hendrickson wrote: “Changing to any other voting method requires a constitutional amendment.”

The city lawyers also said existing state election law, which governs how St. Paul runs its elections, does not allow the city to use IRV for general city elections.

Those seem to be two big strikes against IRV in St. Paul. The third may be this: The City Council does not have to put the measure on the ballot — indeed, it should not — if it believes that IRV is likely to be struck down as unconstitutional or contrary to state law. A city council, the Minnesota Supreme Court said in a 1982 case, “must have the authority to avoid what would amount to a futile election and a total waste of taxpayers’ money.”

The city of Minneapolis is headed down that road.

IRV for city elections was approved by Minneapolis voters in 2006. It is being challenged in court, and its implementation has been set back due to difficulties in finding equipment that works and is acceptable to state and federal authorities. The city recently said IRV could be pushed back to the 2013 election. If the St. Paul lawyers are right, it will be stopped dead by the courts before then.

One postscript: St. Paul City Council President Kathy Lantry noted that she and other council members were eager some time ago to institute a photo-traffic-ticketing system known as “PhotoCop.” It raised legal and constitutional issues and, she said, “The city attorney said, ‘Whoa.’ ”

St. Paul held off but Minneapolis put up the cameras. The state Supreme Court subsequently ruled that “PhotoCop” violates state traffic laws. Minneapolis may have to refund millions in fines.

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